TOKYO, Aug. 23, 2019—South Korea’s announcement Aug. 22 to abrogate a bilateral defense information sharing treaty, GSOMIA, with Japan, the decision that could encourage North Korea to test more missiles, underscores the Trump White House inability to ‘Make America Great Again’ and regain the eroding U.S. position in the world.
South Korean deputy director of the national security council, Kim You-geum, told a news conference Aug. 22, ‘…we have determined that it would not serve our national interest to maintain an agreement we signed with the aim of exchanging military information which is sensitive to security.’ He said Japan has created a ‘grave change’ in the bilateral relationship.
U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo told a separate news conference in Ottawa, Canada: ‘We are disappointed…We are urging each of the two countries to continue to engage…There is no doubt that the shared interests of Japan and South Korea are important and the are important to the United States.’ Yet, he even failed to offer mediating the two countries.
Seoul made the announcement after a trilateral foreign ministerial meeting in Beijing of Korea, Japan and China hosted by Chinese premier Li Keqiang yielded no progress in mending the fast-deteriorating Japan-Korea relationship. Earlier,
Sounding hollow, Pompeo said in Bangkok, Thailand in late July that he would encourage the two feuding countries to ‘find a path forward.’
The Trump White House’s ineptitude at placating the two countries underscores its ignorance about the highly complex international politics and diplomacy of not only East Asia but also the Middle East, the Asian sub-Continent, Middle and South America and other regions. Its inability is in sharp contrast to Barrack Obama. Effectively, Obama acknowledged that the United States was no long the global policeman and the United States needed cooperation with other countries in maintaining global peace and stability, and with it, growth.
Symbolic of his good will, Obama visited Hiroshima in August 2016 as the first U.S. president to ever do so and offer beautiful words of atonement to atomic bomb victims perished on Aug. 6, 1945 under a giant mushroom cloud detonated by the United States and preached for creating a world punctuated by humanity and empathy. (https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/05/27/national/full-text-of-obamas-speech-in-hiroshima/#.XV9NPS2KUWo)
–Toshio Aritake